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👤 Rebel of the Week
Peter Kropotkin: The Russian anarchist prince who challenged evolution
Are we cooperative or competitive? Kropotkin believed in the law of mutual aid—that cooperation was the predominant evolutionary force driving all social life, from microbes to humans.
📚 Light Reading
Is medicine overrated?
Given medicine’s poor record, physicians should prescribe and patients should consume far fewer medications, a new book argues.
The Stoics were right – emotional control is good for the soul
Both neuroscience and psychotherapy agree that you can change your mental framework, as the Stoic Marcus Aurelius described.
A constitution for teenage happiness
Like human happiness, teenage happiness does not flourish when everyone has the freedom to live just as they please. Where there is neither order nor necessity in life—no constraints, no inhibitions, no discomfort—life becomes both relaxing and boring, as American philosopher Allan Bloom notes. A soft imprisonment.
🔎 Study of the Week
The dark side of going green
This study reveals that the dark triad of personality traits—narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy—can predict organic food consumption.
This prediction is influenced by consumers' engagement in virtue signaling, status consumption, and the approval they receive from others.
📺 Video of the Week
We all got tricked into content addiction (10 min.)
🎙 Podcast Episode
Why does the brain have two distinct hemispheres? Iain McGilchrist, psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and philosopher, challenges the oversimplified 'left brain' and 'right brain' notions and delves into this question.
He argues that Western society's favouring of one hemisphere has led to adverse consequences in our daily lives.
🗣 Words to Live By
👀 Perception Watch
This ostrich must have been going at a fair speed when it hit the tree!
😲 WTF
In 2016, a team of physicists delved into the accuracy of witness identifications in police lineups. They uncovered an intriguing phenomenon known as the 'paradox of unanimity.'
Surprisingly, as unanimous agreement among witnesses increased, the accuracy of their identifications decreased, eventually reaching a level no better than random chance. In essence, the more people agree, the less likely they are thinking for themselves.
😁 In the Memetime
📖 Book Club
We often lament our scattered thoughts and the external distractions that disrupt our inner peace. In The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew Crawford argues that addressing this challenge means acknowledging how our attention shapes our identity.
He reveals that our attention crisis isn't solely due to digital technology but stems from deep-seated Western cultural assumptions that clash with our innate human nature."
🤔 Contemplation Corner
🎧 The Song of the Week
New Order — Your Silent Face
Listen to the Rebel Intellects playlist on Spotify.
🧠 Become a Rebel
Elevate your thinking, one maverick at a time. Each month, our membership community explores a different philosopher's wisdom. Click here to find out more.
October Workshop:
👍 Thanks for Reading
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Live well, and I’ll see you next week.
John